Jay Leno moving to NBC weeknights at 10pm

[zero]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081209/ap_en_tv/tv_nbc_leno

NEW YORK – NBC reportedly has signed its late-night star Jay Leno to a contract that will keep him at the network and move him to prime time.

Under the new deal, Leno, whose "Tonight" show hosting job will go to Conan O'Brien next June, would have a new show airing 10 p.m. Eastern every weeknight, according to The New York Times.

The deal reportedly will be announced Tuesday.

The arrangement would enable NBC to hold on to Leno, who might have jumped to a competing network, and even been on the air as a rival to O'Brien.

It also stands to significantly reduce programming costs for the struggling network, which has long been No. 4 in the ratings and last week laid off 500 employees. Leno's five-a-week talk-variety format would be considerably cheaper to produce than most scripted dramatic series.

This "strip" scheduling is common other times of the day, but seldom seen in prime time. Such a money-saving move was foreshadowed Monday by NBC Universal chief executive Jeff Zucker in remarks during an investor conference in New York. He said the network would have to consider scaling back the number of hours it airs programming.

Leno, who took over "Tonight" from Johnny Carson in 1992, is effectively being evicted from its anchor desk under a deal NBC announced four years ago that guaranteed the job to "Late Night" host O'Brien.

Aimed at keeping O'Brien at NBC, the plan also guaranteed the network five more years of Leno's services at 11:35 p.m., where he continues to reign as late-night ratings champ. But it put NBC in danger of losing Leno, whose future subsequently became a matter of much speculation. His farewell as "Tonight" host is next May 29.

Wow, this is bizarre on so many levels - NBC is cutting five hours of programming per week, effectively neutering Conan's big move to the Tonight Show and without programming at 10pm, they've essentially become a lower-level network. I'm one of the few people under the age of 60 that actually likes Jay Leno, but this just seems like a horrible idea. What happens if this bombs? Does NBC just drop the 10pm hour altogether and go to local programming like FOX or CW? And didn't NBC just learn their lesson last week with prime time "variety" shows?

This is the problem with media today, it's all "cut, cut, cut," wherever you can cut costs. People aren't listening to the radio? Fire the DJs. Newspaper circulation is down? Layoff 10% of your staff. Nobody's watching TV? Cut expensive programming. Nowhere does anybody actually look at the problem and try to actually fix it, it's just cut costs and do whatever it takes to make money for those shareholders. Of course, the last few weeks showed us what happens when you follow that strategy - you become the auto industry. Ford, GM and Chrysler don't make cars people want to buy, but instead of changing your business strategy and adapting with the times, you just fire people and ship jobs to other countries. NBC is the first, but I have a feeling they won't be the last.

Edited December 9, 2008 by Zero

[naiwf]

Wow, it looks like NBC no longer cares to be taken seriously as a network. If CBS or ABC follows suit, they may as well just kill off the networks as a whole because the CW, FOX and MyNetwork TV are pretty much viewed as jokes as it is.

[GoGo Yubari]

Honestly, who the fuck needs like four hours of talk shows in one night? We don't even need three, the only thing Carson Daly's show seems to be useful for is putting people to sleep (no, seriously, there was a study that proved that). All this is going to do is neuter Conan O'Brien who's going from being the #2 guy to... probably that #2 guy at an earlier hour, completely kill Jimmy Fallon (though admittedly the fact that he's Jimmy Fallon kills Jimmy Fallon anyway), and... okay, I don't really care what happens to Last Call so that's a moot point.

[zero]

CBS is still doing rather well, which is utterly confusing to me as I can't name a single show outside of How I Met Your Mother that I've EVER watched on that network. But I guess when you have 47 CSIs on every week and for unexplainable reasons, people watch them, you do okay.

Edited December 9, 2008 by Zero

[naiwf]

CBS is still doing rather well, which is utterly confusing to me as I can't name a single show outside of How I Met Your Mother that I've EVER watched on that network. But I guess when you have 47 CSIs on every week and for unexplainable reasons, people watch them, you do okay.

Hey there's only 3 CSI's . . . unless you count NCIS (CSI in the water), Criminal Minds (CSI of the psyche), the Mentalist (CSI with a psychic), Numb3rs (CSI with numbers), Cold Case (CSI with old cases), Without a Trace (CSI with missing persons), Ghost Whisperer (CSI with ghosts), and Eleventh Hour (CSI with "oddities")

[thuganomic]

This move makes perfect sense to me. Like the article stated, it was heavily foreshadowed and now it makes perfect logical sense. It's win-win for NBC if only because they get to keep Leno from going to ABC and trouncing Conan there. Look, Conan's target audience is not Leno's target audience. Meaning the people this is aimed at, the 60 year olds, maybe they'll stick around and watch Conan. But if they don't, Conan's got his own fanbase now and he'll do fine at 11:30. I agree that Fallon gets the short end of the stick here, but...I also agree that nobody gives a flying hoot about Jimmy Fallon.

It's clear that NBC can't compete in the scripted drama arena; there has been a plethora of failures in the last 3 television seasons. This allows them to stop the hurting for a bit with an entity that's known to work (Leno, like it or not, is far from the risk that the Rosie disaster was).

[zero]

naiwf - I love you.

And I don't get where NBC thought Leno was going to go unless ABC planned on canceling Nightline and booting Kimmel. They wouldn't cancel Nightline in '92 for Letterman and I suppose they could do it now that Koppel has retired, but was there ever any indication of it? Letterman isn't retiring yet so it won't be CBS, so the only other option would be syndication. I understand NBC doesn't want Leno to go, but they were the ones that forced him out of The Tonight Show and now to make sure he doesn't go somewhere else, they're handing him an hour of prime time every single night? That makes no sense. "Hey we don't think you should do this show anymore, here's pretty much the exact same thing in an earlier timeslot." All this looks like to me is that they got cold feet about Conan, but didn't want to pay him the penalty clause and didn't want to look like the same buffoons that caused the mess in '92 between Carson, Leno and Letterman.

And I don't think it's that NBC can't compete in scripted drama, they're just not doing it right. What the right way is, I don't know, but they're one of the big three networks, of course they CAN do it, they're just in a slump. Hell, who would have thought twenty years ago that FOX would become a legitimate network? But thanks to shows like The Simpsons, Married... With Children and that little juggernaut called American Idol, they've solidified themselves. I'm sure part of the problem with networks today is that nobody sticks with anything to give it a chance to cultivate or find an audience - if NBC ran their network like this in the 90s, we never would have had Seinfeld. There's an audience out there for a lot of shows that struggle out of the gate and with the right marketing, I think you can make any show a hit. According to Jim has been on the air for eight fucking seasons, so that should be evidence right there that you can make just about any show work, even if it's a steaming pile of dog shit. NBC just needs to find it's niche and I don't think eliminating five hours of programming a week for a guy that you forced out but don't want to jump ship is the right way to do it.

Edited December 9, 2008 by Zero

[Toe]

According To Jim has been on for 8 seasons? Fuck off. That is not right. Who watches that shit?

Edited December 9, 2008 by Toe

[TGC]

The Mentalist and Criminal Minds are not CSI With....(insert joke here). Both are actually good shows.

Just saying.

[GoGo Yubari]

Technically, being "CSI with ______" doesn't make something a bad or good, it just means it's "CSI with ______."

[Slogger]

NCIS is awesome, Way better than to be called a CSI clone, Whats next, Gonna be calling JAG "CSI with Lawyers"?

[MalaCloudy Black]

You know, I didn't know until recently but NCIS is sort of a spinoff of JAG. JAG was awesome.

[Slogger]

It's a spin off, But the pilot was two episodes of JAG, I don't think many shows have done that TBH.

and yes, JAG was Awesome and thus NCIS is even more kinds of awesome.

[MalaCloudy Black]

Backdoor pilots, yaaaaaay!

[TheSqauredCircleMessiah]

It's a spin off, But the pilot was two episodes of JAG, I don't think many shows have done that TBH.

and yes, JAG was Awesome and thus NCIS is even more kinds of awesome.

That method is actually pretty common practice in TV. There's a rumor that that's how NBC is going to introduce "The Office" spin-off.

This also proves that both and NBC AND Leno fucked up this whole deal. NBC overreacted extremely in locking up Conan and Leno probably thought he'd have some sort of Johnny Carson ride into the sunset, but nobody cares. Economics is also playing a role. Leno obviously wants to stay on TV, but there's no huge money out there right now and NBC obviously wants to keep him on the chair but they are not about to pay Conan the $35 or so million they owe him if they renegged on the deal. If this was 12 months ago, Leno would be announcing a major deal with ABC or FOX right now, guaranteed. ABC was ready to dump Nightline with Koppel 5 years ago for Letterman and certainly would dump Nightline without Koppel and Kimmell for Leno. This whole situation is just odd, I would really like to see how long this deal is for. I can't see NBC committing to dumping the 10PM hour for more than a year or two.

[Guest Mr. Potato Head]

Yeah, the essential return of variety shows to primetime television (unless you count stuff like American Idol). How horrible.

[zero]

From what it sounds like, this show is going to be The Tonight Show at 10pm - Leno will still do a monologue, plus all his famous bits like Headlines and Jaywalking - and I assume there will be guests and musical performances as I can't see Jay Leno just going out there and trying to be funny for an hour every night.

Edited December 9, 2008 by Zero

[LL!]

Since it doesn't warrant its own topic I'd just like to add something to this Late Night Talk Show talk and say that Jimmy Fallon is actually off to a great start actually getting The Roots to be his houseband. He's doing nightly blogs (starting yesterday) to set up his debut in March.

[Guest Mr. Potato Head]

From what it sounds like, this show is going to be The Tonight Show at 10pm - Leno will still do a monologue, plus all his famous bits like Headlines and Jaywalking - and I assume there will be guests and musical performances as I can't see Jay Leno just going out there and trying to be funny for an hour every night.

Still, aside from the fact that guests will almost always be on primarily to promote their latest movie or book, it's closer to the Ed Sullivan Show than anything else we've seen in decades.

[VinnyT]

Btw, in a barely related note, Gaslight Anthem is gonna be on Conan tonight, in case anyone in this thread are fans.

(Really saw no where else to post that)